This Scientist Found a Way to "Re-Form" Old Cellphones and Other E-Waste

A scientist in Australia is making a difference by addressing the problems in large trash that does not go to waste. Much of the 2.2 billion tons of the world's trash each year leads to landfills or open dumps, but supplies scientist and engineer Veena Sahajwalla of the College of New South Wales in Sydney has created a solution to solve this problem.

According to Discover Magazine, Sahajwalla created waste microfactories or little trash processors wherein some are as small as 500 square feet, home to several machines that recycle waste and make it into new supplies.

Experts hope that this brand new all-in-one strategy might help improve out of date recycling processes being employed today.

Sahajwalla's Waste Microfactories

In 2018, Sahajwalla launched here first waste microfactory in Sydney, Australia. Then a year later, she added another waste microfactory that already started recycling plastics.

Together with college and business companions, the scientist and her lab group are working in commercializing their patented Microfactorie expertise. According to Sahajwalla, the small scale of machines will make renewable power simpler, compared to giant manufacturing vegetation.

Moreover, it will help cities to recycle their waste and convert it into new merchandise on location. Thus, avoiding the long trips from the recycling processors to the manufacturing vegetation. Gone are the times when retailer supplies, extraction of components, and producing new merchandise are separated.

Sahajwalla's invention evolves the concept of recycling vegetation breaking down supplies to reuse in comparable merchandise. Waste microfactories take supplies from previous products and create new ones.

For example, breaking down smartphones and pc screen and extracting silica from the glass and carbon from the plastic casing can be done in microfactories. Then it is mixed into silicon carbide nanowires that generate a standard ceramic material that has many industrial use.

In 2019, around 17.4% of electronic waste was recycled. Sahajwalla's innovative invention to re-form e-wastes gives a solution to the growing problem of recycling advanced digital units. "[We] can accomplish that far more with supplies," she said.

Sahajwall calls this the fourth "R" or also known as the "re-form" to add to the popular phrase: reduce, reuse, recycle.

World's E-Waste

Electronic waste or e-waste is those trash that includes working and broken items that have been discarded in the garbage or donated to a charity reseller like Goodwill. If it goes unsold, the electronic item will be thrown away and will add up to the pile of trash.

A previous report from Science Times said that the production of e-waste generates the bulk of the world's trash, from its manufacturing and transportation to electricity production. Plus, producing them involves using hazardous chemicals and greenhouse gases while polluting the water drainage that is usually invisible to most people.

This invisible waste contributes to the fastest-growing trash stream that could create serious problems for all living things. All in all, e-waste is dangerous due to its toxic chemicals that naturally came from the metals inside when buried.

Check out more news and information on Electronic Waste at Science Times.